ABSTRACT
Beginning in the 1880s, a veritable army of journalists, politicians, and inspectors explored New York’s Lower East Side, the crowded neighborhood where Eastern-European Jewish and Italian immigrants had found work and cramped housing. These outside observers brought back with them tales of a foreign quarter to share with a curious and frightened middle-class and elite American audience. They described the strange habits of the Lower East Side’s residents and the filth and squalor of the area’s tenement apartments. Most important to their audience, these critics described the neighborhood’s garment contract shops. After all, it was through these shops—and the clothing produced in them—that American, middle- and upper-class New York was linked to working-class and immigrant New York.
